How Neuroplasticity Can Be Used for Tinnitus and Vertigo

Tinnitus and vertigo are two symptoms that can be confusing and cause much distress. They both can have different elements of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity can be used to reduce your symptoms of tinnitus and vertigo.

What is Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is sound in the head without an external source. It often is a ringing sound, but it can also be whistling, buzzing, hissing, roaring, or another sound. The sound may come from one ear or both, within the head, or from a distance. Tinnitus may be constant or intermittent, steady or pulsating. It tends to be subjective, meaning only you can hear the noise.

Tinnitus can emerge anywhere along the auditory pathway, from the outer ear to the brain’s auditory cortex. Tinnitus is commonly caused by damage to the hair cells in the cochlea, which help transform sound waves into nerve signals. When the brain doesn’t receive the signals they’re expecting from the cochlea, it turns up the intensity on those pathways to try to detect the signal. The resulting noise is the sound of tinnitus.

Sometimes, our bodies produce sounds that we don’t notice unless something blocks our ability to hear external sounds.

Acute Tinnitus

Tinnitus often occurs for a short time after being exposed to a really loud noise. Some medications can cause tinnitus, which disappears when the drug is discontinued.

Chronic Tinnitus

When tinnitus lasts more than six months, it’s known as chronic tinnitus. Tinnitus is rarely a sign of a serious medical problem or a path towards deafness. The course of chronic tinnitus is unpredictable. The symptoms can stay the same, worsen, or become less noticeable over time.

Pulsatile Tinnitus

Pulsatile tinnitus is when you hear your body sounds, including heartbeat, inside your ears. It tends to be more noticeable at night when there are fewer external sounds to mask the tinnitus.

What Causes Tinnitus?

Your physician will evaluate your tinnitus to determine whether it is caused by an underlying issue that needs to be treated.

Some Drugs that Can Cause or Worsen Tinnitus

• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): Aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve, Naprosyn).
• Antibiotics: ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, gentamicin, erythromycin, tetracycline, tobramycin, and vancomycin
• Antimalarial drugs: chloroquine and quinine
• Anticonvulsants: carbamazepine and valproic acid

• Cancer drugs: cisplatin and vincristine
• Loop diuretics (by IV in high doses): bumetanide, furosemide, and torsemide
• Tricyclic antidepressants: amitriptyline, clomipramine, and imipramine

Common Underlying Causes of Tinnitus

• Musculoskeletal factors, such as jaw clenching, tooth grinding, prior injury, or muscle tension
• Problems in the auditory system
• Tumour or blood vessel abnormality (pulsatile tinnitus)
• General health: diet, physical activity, sleep, and stress
• Other conditions: depression, anxiety, insomnia, pain, thyroid problems, blood pressure, allergies, diabetes, and wax build-up.
• Loud noises

Common Treatment for Tinnitus

No medications are approved for tinnitus; no drug, supplement, or herb has been found to be more effective than a placebo. Treatment of underlying conditions can be effective. Behavioural and sound-generating strategies can also help. They include the following:

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
• Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT)
• Masking
• Biofeedback
• Stress management

Recently, different techniques and strategies have shown the effectiveness of using neuroplasticity in reducing tinnitus.

What is Vertigo?

Vertigo is dizziness that creates the false sense that you or your surroundings are spinning or moving. Beyond dizziness, you may also experience increased sweating, headache, nausea, vomiting, ringing or buzzing in your ears, hearing loss, involuntary eye movements, and loss of balance. Vertigo often begins suddenly and may vary in intensity. It may be constant, or it may come and go.

Vertigo can be caused by infections, migraines, injuries, and several other health conditions. Treating the underlying cause is the most effective way to decrease discomfort and provide long-term relief.

Types of Vertigo

There are two categories of vertigo: peripheral vertigo and central vertigo.

Peripheral Vertigo

Peripheral vertigo is the most common type. It occurs when a problem occurs in the inner ear or the vestibular nerve, which controls balance.

Central Vertigo

Central vertigo occurs as a result of a problem in the brain. It can be caused by a variety of different conditions, including stroke, brain tumour, migraine, traumatic brain injury, infection, and multiple sclerosis.

Common Causes for Vertigo

• Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV)
• Infection
• Meniere’s disease
• Migraine
• Head or neck injury
• Medications
• Benign positional vertigo

Treatment for Vertigo

Treatment options for vertigo can depend on the underlying cause. Vestibular rehabilitation therapy and medications, such as meclizine (Antivert), have been found to be effective in improving symptoms. You may need surgery to treat certain underlying conditions that can cause vertigo, such as a brain tumour. Stress reduction techniques can improve vertigo, as stress can worsen symptoms.

Recently, different techniques and strategies have shown the effectiveness of using neuroplasticity in reducing and treating vertigo.

Why Can Neuroplasticity be Used for Tinnitus and Vertigo?

What is Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to create new pathways and neurons. It encompasses how nerve cells adapt to circumstances—responding to stimulation by generating new tendrils of connection to other nerve cells, called synapses, and responding to deprivation and excess stress by weakening connections.

The brain is home to around 100 billion neurons. At one point, scientists thought that the creation of new neurons stopped soon after birth. We now know that our brains adapt and change as we learn and grow. We have more synapses to a neuron at age three than as an adult because the brain eliminates unused connections and strengthens others in a process called synaptic pruning, which helps people adapt to their environments. Our brains can also create new pathways, neurons, and connections throughout life.

Our brains can be moulded based on the structure, message, or framework of the techniques that we’re following. For humans (and other organisms), neuroplasticity is essential in developing our cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. This is because neuroplasticity is a way for our nervous system to change its activity in response to inherited or acquired causes by rearranging its structure, functions, or connections. Even simple actions trigger these changes and are an ongoing phenomenon throughout our lives.

How Does Neuroplasticity Work for Tinnitus and Vertigo?

Tinnitus and vertigo treatment involve neuroplasticity at several levels. We have some control over how our brain works and adapts, even if we don’t think so. Both tinnitus and vertigo have systems that are connected to the brain and our ears.

Levels of Neuroplastic Symptoms

There are three different levels of neuroplastic symptoms in tinnitus and vertigo:

1. Structural—Symptoms caused by structural problems (bones, muscles, nerves, connective tissues, etc.) are rare. Treatment needs to address these problems, and neuroplasticity techniques are unlikely to help.
2. Neuroplastic – Symptoms are caused by neuroplasticity (trauma, suppressed emotions, neural pathways, thought patterns, etc.), and you can get rid of vertigo symptoms or reduce the tinnitus to barely noticeable. Treatment focuses on addressing the trauma, fear, stress, suppressed emotions, and patterns that may be behind your symptoms.
3. Mixed – Symptoms are caused by structural problems but amplified by neuroplasticity. In these situations, you can reduce the intensity of the symptoms with neuroplasticity. Treatment is similar to the treatment for neuroplastic symptoms.

Guidelines for Using Neuroplasticity Effectively for Tinnitus and Vertigo

For successful learning or relearning, we need goals and consistency. Neuroplasticity for healing tinnitus and vertigo is a similar process. We need to practice recreating neural pathways that feel ‘normal.’ To do this, we need guidance to reset our perception of symptoms. It may seem challenging, but we can ‘teach’ our brain and rebuild it to help relieve our symptoms. So, if we can rewire our connections to tinnitus by reducing connections to inputs interpreted as negative or stressful, our perception of tinnitus can be improved.

Neuroplasticity is a great way to achieve relief because it’s not restrictive, can be learned at home, and can be done at your own pace. However, it’s important to remember that neuroplasticity treatment needs to be personalized to you.

The good news is that if we train our brains correctly, we can turn neuroplasticity into a strength. One way to accomplish this is through meditation. The practice of meditation or box breathing focuses on our breathing. This focus impacts the brain and the autonomic nervous system function by creating a healthy response in our limbic system. When we can calm our minds, we can control our thoughts, which helps us be less reactive to our symptoms.

Rock Steady Program

Rock Steady is a program developed by Joey Remenyi for vertigo and tinnitus that uses neuroplasticity to reduce symptoms. It has been effective for several people. The program is available online and in a book explaining how to use neuroplasticity to reduce symptoms. The central concept is that if you focus on other things besides your symptoms, you weaken the neural connections that keep your symptoms at a high level and strengthen other neural connections that can reduce your symptoms. It uses exercises and other techniques to use neuroplasticity to relieve your distress and symptoms.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy/Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy

Fighting the symptoms tends to make them worse, so Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) focuses on changing your relationship with your symptoms. This can mean reducing the anxiety and distress associated with your symptoms.

The symptoms can come from suppressed emotions, so Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy focuses on expressing those emotions to reduce your symptoms.

EMDR

If a person has experienced historical trauma linked to tinnitus, processing the original trauma using EMDR can positively impact a person’s tinnitus experience. Benefits also include helping clients have a more positive belief about living with tinnitus and negating negative or undesirable emotions about their experience of tinnitus. With EMDR, you can get to a point where you no longer react psychologically or somatically to your tinnitus.

EMDR can also reduce the neuroplastic aspect of your symptoms. Know that when using EMDR, your brain causes the healing. Your nervous system knows just what to do and what it needs.

What are the Limitations of Neuroplasticity for Tinnitus and Vertigo?

Neuroplasticity depends on being open to the concept and willing to practice practices that instill safety and acceptance in your nervous system. However, neuroplasticity will not heal the damage to your body. It can change the neural pathways but not the structural damage.

Conclusion

Tinnitus and vertigo can be distressing symptoms that interfere with quality of life. Although the medical system does not offer many treatments for these symptoms, neuroplasticity can provide promising treatments that can bring relief.